


Damn Fine

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Meet-Cute, Tumblr Prompt, priyanka chopra as arianne, richard madden as robb, robb stark/arianne martell, robbianne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 07:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13922505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: From Tumblr user Simke01:Arianne/Robb for 38. On her way to work Arianne gets a ticket and tries to flirt her way out, but for the first time in her life, it doesn't work.That doesn't mean she will stop. After a while, she just wants Robb to ask her out. Robb keeps stopping her because he wants to ask her out, but he gets cold feet every time he talks to her. After X times, Arianne suspects that Robb is gay, stupid or something else and takes Marge with her. Marge sees the truth and helps them.Picset





	Damn Fine

It’s not that she’s  _startled_ to see him, when Officer Robb Stark steps into Epic Café one breezy spring day, but still, Arianne jumps in her chair, eyes wide as she tracks his progress across the room towards the counter. He’s a stark – ha – contrast here in his uniform, all serious blacks and the glint of gunmetal, and he sticks out like a sore thumb amid potted plants hanging from macramé holders in windows, amid college kids in flip flops and tank tops, amid the hipster indie music streaming from satellite radio. Even if she didn’t know him her eyes would be drawn to him. Even if he wasn’t so blue-eyed cute and auburn-haired adorable, she wouldn’t be able to help herself.

No, startled isn’t the word for her reaction.

Excited. That’s the word.

Not that running into people isn’t a regular occurrence here in Tucson (there are certain bars she flat out won’t go to; calls them Lands of the Exes). No, the reason that thisRobb Stark Sighting is so thrilling is that Margaery is here with her and she can finally simultaneously show him off and commiserate over her failure _._

“Hey,” Arianne murmurs, though the regular chatter and racket and background music is more than enough to mask their conversation. “Put down your phone and look up, two o’clock.”

“What’s happening at two o’clock?” Margaery says to her rose gold iPhone as she texts, her thumbs flying across the screen like dragonflies across a pond. “I have plans with Bronn this afternoon.”

Arianne rolls her eyes but then snorts out a soft chuckle. She knows her bestie.

“Hot guy  _at_ two o’clock.”

At the sound of that, Margaery drops her phone deftly into her lap, sniffs and blinks a few times to clear her vision as she zeroes in on the cop who manages to look hot even in his short-sleeved uniform.

“Well, hellooo nurse,” Margaery says with a hum of approval.

Despite being with Bronn for a very content - if not occasionally dramatic - two years, there’s nothing Margie loves more than to do a little window shopping.

“That’s  _the_ hot guy I’ve been talking about for weeks.”

“The one who is either gay or blind for still giving you and that rack a traffic ticket?”

Arianne sighs and nods. It was one of the lowest moments in an otherwise illustrious career of getting what she wants out of men simply for her, heh, assets. She figures if a man is that easily swayed then he deserves it, and she’s never met a man she couldn’t sway. Until three weeks ago at the intersection of Campbell and Glenn when she blazed though a red light only to get nabbed by Officer Stark.

 

No amount of cleavage-squeezing, lash-batting, or run-your-fingers-along-your-clavicle-ing could persuade him to just let her go with a warning, though she had been thrilled at the twinkle in his eye as he tore the ticket out of his little machine and handed it to her.

“Oh come  _on,_ ” she huffed. 

“A violation is a violation,” he said.

“Mmhmm,” she said, staring down at the ticket, noting his name and badge number before her gaze settled on the $200 price. “The cost of this is a freakin’ violation, if you ask me,” she said, looking back up at him with a pout.

It was all she could do not to ask for a little violating out of  _him_.

He chuckled and shrugged. “I don’t set the cost, Mrs., uh,” he faltered a moment before glancing down at her.

Arianne sniffed and lifted her chin.

“ _Ms._  Martell.”

He looked down to the license he still had in his hand, and  _was that a look of relief,_ she thinks when a smile ghosts his mouth. 

“But you  _do_ hand out the ticket,” she retorted, making sure to brush his thumb with her fingertip when she took her ID and insurance card from him.

Still, no reaction.  _Come on, buddy, take the ticket back._

“Yes,” he said, reattaching that hateful little ticket machine back to his utility belt. Gave her a look with his head still bowed. “Because _you_ ran the light.”

Another smile from him, and that was when it became clear to her that this was just aloof politeness, those smiles and chuckles, the sign of a well-mannered man, and something about that stung her almost as much as the damn ticket. $200 was a small ding to her paycheck. But a hot guy who wasn’t into her? That _sucked_.

“Drive safe, Ms. Martell,” he said, patting the roof of her Tesla before he turned and walked back to his cop car.

“It’s Arianne,” she called out before she could stop herself.

“Drive safe, Arianne!” he shouted back.

 

“I swear to god, that’s the most I’ve ever thrown myself at a man, and for  _nothing,_ ” Arianne sighs as she hunches over her iced chai with her chin in her hand.

“Well, for $200,” Margaery supplies helpfully, earning a stern Look from Arianne.

Her pretty features arrange themselves into a look of ingenue innocence before she gives up the ghost and laughs.

“If he’s not into you then he’s worthless and stupid,” she says, stirring her latte with a wooden swizzle stick. “But damn if he isn’t hot.” 

A sly-eyed glance to Officer Stark still standing in line scrolling through his phone. She shrugs and sips her coffee, makes a face.

“Definitely hotter than this drink,” she says, standing with a stretch and the mention of getting the barista to reheat it.

Arianne huffs a lock of her hair out of her eyes and turns her attention to the bustle of Saturday afternoon foot traffic outside the long stretch of window on the University Blvd side. Girls with yoga mats, bearded hipsters walking their mismatched-eyed cattle dogs, herds of bicyclists taking up half the lane, tattooed fathers wearing babies in slings and zen mothers in dreads and septum piercings. And then there’s the clearing of a throat and the deep voice of a man coming from beside and above her. Arianne lifts her chin, straightens her spine like a ramrod and sits up to gaze at Officer Robb Stark.

“Arianne?”

The pounding of her heart is going to give her away, she’s that thrilled and buzzy-buzzy delighted, but nervousness was never her thing, so she summons her inner Mata Hari, flips her hair over her shoulder and gives him what she knows is a dazzler of a smile.

“Hi there,” she says a touch breathlessly.

Normally that affectation is forced during other flirtations, but this time it is utterly genuine. Lord, she never thought she’d ever be this attracted to a freaking cop.

“Hey,” he says, gesturing with his to-go cup of coffee towards Margaery’s chair. “Is this seat taken?”

It’s always been Sisters Before Misters with Arianne, and so she hesitates only a moment before answering.

“Well, actually, my friend Margaery is—”

“On her way out the door, actually,” Margaery says, materializing next to Robb with a steaming latte in hand.

A look of disappointed resignation blooms on her face, one that Arianne recognizes as 100% phony, and it’s almost impossible not to grin.

“Granny needs me to help her with some landscaping snafu or something. Anyways, Robb, it was nice meeting you,” she says with a radiant smile before she sneaks a wink to Arianne. “Bye, Rainy. Try not to have  _too_ much fun without me.”

“That depends,” Arianne says over her shoulder, twisting in her chair so Robb can’t see when she mouths _You shifty bitch_ to her best friend.

“I know,” Margaery replies with a tinkle of laughter and the waggle of her fingertips.

Margaery sails out of Epic like a lace ship with a wake of Dior perfume, and he slides his tall frame into the chair across from Arianne.

“So,” Robb says.

“So,” she returns, chin back in her hand though it’s far more poised and attentive than her previous solitary slouch.

Robb smiles at her, eyes a flit like snowfall as he studies her face. Gone are the distractions of the street, the noise of the patrons and the hissing of the espresso machine, gone are the smells and the brightly painted walls.  All that’s left is bathing in this man’s attention, and goodness doesn’t  _that_ conjure up some images. But he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who responds positively to being asked to please strip naked right this minute, and true, maybe the uniform is supplying some of that goody-two-shoes image he’s got going on, but at the same time, Arianne doesn’t mind. He’s got a bit of that walking hand-in-hand for an evening before even attempting a kiss on the cheek thing going on, and she finds that she likes it. Every flavor has its place when it comes to her palate, and she enjoys the sweet just as much as the spice.

These thoughts fill up the space of the four or five seconds of silence between them before his smile cracks into a chuckle and he leans towards her, forearms on the table and his cup of coffee in his hands.

“I hope I didn’t push your friend out of your coffee date together,” he says finally, eyes downcast as he watches his fingers tap out a soft little beat on the white cup. “But when Margaery introduced herself and scolded me for giving her pretty friend a ticket, and I realized it was you, I couldn’t help myself.”

“Oh?”

More breathlessness, more heartbeats, more smiles she cannot suppress, not even with her well-trained mastery of sultry flirtation and cat-and-mouse seduction, because for once in her life she’s uninterested in pulling that out of her bag of tricks.

Robb nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was so unbelievably hard for me not to ask you for your number when I pulled you over. You- you’re _stunning._ ”

A flush of a blush creeps up beneath his five o’clock shadow. Instant relief like the releasing of a thousand scarlet balloons, right out of her chest into the vivid blue sky. She’s beaming so hard her cheeks hurt.

“Oh yeah? Well then why  _didn’t_ you?”

“Because I was on duty,” he says with a look of surprise that she would even ask. “And I just got off my shift an hour ago, so I figure here’s my chance.”

She laughs. Dudley Do-Right over here.

“Are you always such a stickler for the rules?”

“Not  _always,_ ” he says with another one of those adorable scruffy-chinned chuckles. “Besides, I didn’t want there to be some sort of power imbalance where you felt cornered or something. If that makes sense.”

Dudley Do-Right, yes. And also adorably considerate.

“Yes it does,” she murmurs, thinking about what holding his hand would be like.

“So, now that I’m off duty and I’ve finally got you again,” he says slowly.

The flick of his gaze down to that coffee cup again, but then up to her mouth, and then to her eyes. He grins nervously, lower lip a snag in his teeth a moment before he laughs and shakes his head.

“Jesus, I’m as nervous as a teenager trying to ask out a super model.”

“If it makes you feel any better, the answer is going to be yes to whatever you’re about to ask.”

His eyebrows lift as she realizes the implications of what she just said.

“Anything, huh?”

“Within reason,” she says slyly.

She lifts a hand to toy with the diamond pendant of her necklace, and it does not escape her notice, how his eyes follow the movement, how the gaze dips down  _juuust_ barely before he looks back up at her.

Maybe not such a goody two-shoes after all.

“Well, how about we start with two questions: can I have your number, and can I take you to dinner tonight?”

If it wasn’t considered so rude, Arianne would whip out her phone and text a dozen confetti emojis and ILUs to Margaery right now. But it is, so instead she scoots her chair closer to him and nods.

“Two answers: yes, and  _absolutely_ you can take me to dinner. I’d settle for nothing less.”

Robb smiles at her, a full smile that reaches his eyes and makes them crinkle in the corners, that warms the blue like the hottest part of a flame.

“Oh yeah?”

Arianne nods, and then smiles wickedly at him.

“Of course,” she says. “You owe me 200 bucks.”

Robb throws his head back and laughs.


End file.
